Blanketed with snow and ice in a world filled with bitter coldness, a group of emperor penguins and their babies were trapped earlier this month into a gully after a storm. After countless attempts to climb over the icy wall failed, they were left pacing around in desperation and their babies on the verge of freezing to death.

The tragedy happened to be filmed by a BBC documentary crew. After two days of filming, they finally decided to break the rule of "no intervention" in wildlife shooting and stepped in to help the birds by digging some ramps in the ice, with the hope of leading the birds out. Fortunately, the smart chicks found the steps and escaped successfully.

There was an outpouring of praise from viewers deeply touched by the filming team's rescue and the heartwarming happy ending.

Nonetheless, the rationality of human intervening stressed wildlife is questioned by many at the same time. They believe death is nothing but a normal process in wildlife. We should not simply be succumbing to our emotional distress with disregard to nature taking its own course.

In addition, the general rule goes as follows: if an animal is faced by a natural threat we should leave it to nature. That said, in the case of these trapped penguins, they would probably have died after all without the crew's presence, and their death won't have caused destructive loss either to their species or the whole ecological system in that area. Therefore, the crew's rescue is a pure act of compassion. Crude to hear though, it's just the way it is.

Another example might enable us to better understand the situation: It should not be our place to warn a deer when a tiger is lurking around and waiting for the perfect time to capture it. A lucky escape for a deer might be unfair to the predator that mainly feeds on herbivores. Or even worse, a tragedy to the local ecosystem at large caused by the loss of grassland devoured by herbivores.

There seems to be no one-for-all answer or rule to guide us before any decision making, especially when man-induced damages contribute more threats to the wild animals than they used to deal with previously. 

Thus when an animal's population is under a critical threat, we have to step in and help them overcome the difficulty.

For instance, in 2017, a disease broke out among saiga antelopes in Mongolia threatening to wipe out 80 percent of the population. Fortunately, the disease was well under control and the number of antelopes bounced back to normal levels after conservationists' timely intervention by administering vaccines.

Another heartbreaking story happened to rafetus swinhoei, a species of softshell turtles. Due to water pollution and climate change, the number of this species in the world plummeted to just three. Sadly, the only couple among the three refused to mate, and to prevent the turtle from extinction, we had to try our best to help them breed.

Since human activities have impacted the planet in such a profound way that animals face way more complicating threats than they ever did, it should be our responsibility to protect wild animals' habitat and educate people on knowledge of conservation.

Necessary intervention doesn't mean to take care of the troubled animals in the way we thought good for them. Animals should be the ones to decide in what way they take care of their babies and prey or in which area they want to live.

The bottom line should be letting them live independently and maintain the environment and wildlife as whole the way it is.